A BRIEF HISTORY OF

CHEMISTRY
Looking back!
 Atoms proposed by the ancient Greeks in - 4th
century B.C..
 Atoms makes matter.
 Over the next two millennia, major advances in
chemistry were achieved by alchemists. Their
major goal was to convert certain elements into
others by a process called transmutation.
The Hellenic Market

~
Fire Water Earth Air
THE
DEVELOPMENT OF

ATOM
Ancient Atomic Theory

 Atomic theory of matter

was first proposed by
Leucippus.
 “Eventually you arrive at

small particles which can

not be further
subdivided.”
Democritus (400 BC)
 First Atomic Hypothesis
 First used the word Atomos:

Greek for “uncuttable”.

Chop up a piece of matter
until you reach the atomos.
 “Nothing exists but atoms

and space, all else is

opinion”.
Properties of atoms according to Democritus.
 indestructible.
 changeable, however, into different forms.
 an infinite number of kinds so there are an infinite number of elements.
 hard substances have rough, prickly atoms that stick together.
 liquids have round, smooth atoms that slide over one another.
 smell is caused by atoms interacting with the nose – rough atoms hurt.
 sleep is caused by atoms escaping the brain.
 death – too many escaped or didn’t return.
 the heart is the center of anger.
 the brain is the center of thought.
 the liver is the seat of desire.
Democritus atomic model.

 No protons, electrons, or neutrons

 Solid and INDESTRUCTABLE
The four element theory
 Plato was an atomist
 Thought all matter was
composed of 4 elements:
 Earth (cool, heavy)
 Water (wet)
 Fire (hot)
 Air (light)
 Ether (close to heaven)
Some Early Ideas on Matter
 Anaxagoras
(Greek, born 500 B.C.)
 Suggested every substance
had its own kind of “seeds”
that clustered together to
make the substance, much
as our atoms cluster to
make molecules.
Some Early Ideas on Matter (cont.)
 Empedocles
(Greek, born in Sicily, 490 B.C.)

 Suggested there were only

four basic seeds – earth,
air, fire, and water. The
elementary substances
(atoms to us) combined in
various ways to make
everything.
Some Early Ideas on Matter (cont.)
 Democritus
(Thracian, born 470 B.C.)
Actually proposed the word
atom (indivisible) because he
believed that all matter
consisted of such tiny units
with voids between, an idea
quite similar to our own
beliefs.
 It was rejected by Aristotle
and thus lost for 2000 years.
Some Early Ideas on Matter (cont.)

Aristotle
(Greek, born 384 B.C.)

 Added the idea of “qualities”

– heat, cold, dryness,
moisture – as basic elements
which combined as shown in
the diagram (previous page).
 Hot + dry made fire; hot +
wet made air, and so on.
Who was Right?
 Greek society was slave based
 Beneath famous to work with hands
 did not experiment
 Greeks settled disagreements by argument
 Aristotle was more famous
 He won!
 His ideas carried through middle ages.
 Alchemists change lead to gold.
Alchemy

 After that chemistry was ruled by

alchemy.
 They believed that could take any
cheap metals and turn them into
gold.
 Alchemists were almost like
magicians.
 elixirs, physical immortality
Contributions of alchemists.
 In formation about elements
 the elements mercury, sulfur, and antimony were
discovered
 properties of some elements
 Develop lab apparatus / procedures /
experimental techniques
 alchemists learned how to prepare acids.

 developed several alloys

 new glassware
Early Ideas on Elements

Robert Boyle
 Robert Boyle (1627 - 1691) was a
child prodigy who was speaking
Latin and Greek by the age of 8.
 A substance was an element unless

it could be broken down to two or

more simpler substances.
 Air therefore could not be an

element because it could be broken

down in to many pure substances.
Modern Chemistry
• Beginnings of modern chemistry were seen in the sixteenth
and seventeenth centuries, where great advances were made
in metallurgy, the extraction of metals from ores.

• In the seventeenth century, Boyle described the relationship

between the pressure and volume of air and defined an
element as a substance that cannot be broken down into two
or more simpler substances by chemical means.
Modern Chemistry (cont.)

 During the eighteenth

century, Priestley
discovered oxygen gas and
the process of combustion
where carbon-containing
materials burn vigorously in
an oxygen atmosphere.
The Modern Atomic Theory
 19th century John Dalton made
inferences that exhibited how atoms
bond together in definite proportions.
 Dalton called the "Modern Atomic

Theory.“ Included in these were two

theories that stated atoms could not
be divided or destroyed, a theory that
stated different elements contain
different chemical properties, and
atoms of the same element contain
the same chemical properties
The Modern Atomic Theory continued…
 Dalton made two assertions about atoms:
(1) atoms of each element are all identical to
one another but different from the atoms of
all other elements, and
(2) atoms of different elements can combine to
form more complex substances.
Expanding the Modern Atomic Theory

 J.J. Thomson is the person

who is credited for
discovering the electron.
 Thomson then created the
Plum Pudding model, which
suggested that electrons and
protons were randomly
placed throughout the atom.
Rutherford's Experiment

 In 1911 British scientist Ernest Rutherford set out

to test Thomson’s proposal by firing a beam of
charged particles at atoms.
 Alpha particles are heavy particles with twice the
positive charge of a proton. Alpha particles are now
known to be the nuclei of helium atoms, which
contain two protons and two neutrons.
 Ernest Rutherford's experiment was to emit alpha
particles towards a thin gold sheet. Rutherford
would then determine where the deflections of the
alpha particles would go, and therefore be able to
theorize what kind of placement protons and
electrons had.
Rutherford's Experiment continued…
Bohr’s Model

 Danish physicist Niels Bohr

used new knowledge about
the radiation emitted from
atoms to develop a model of
the atom significantly
different from Rutherford’s
model.
Bohr’s Model continued…

 Bohr developed a theory by which he could

predict the same wavelengths scientists had
measured radiating from atoms with a single
electron. He concluded that because atoms
emit light only at discrete wavelengths,
electrons could only orbit at certain
designated radii, and light could be emitted
only when an electron jumped from one of
these designated orbits to another.
BOHR’s Model
2+ 8 + 8 electrons

Ar
18p+
18no

3 electron shells
So what does it all mean?
 An atom is made up of 3 main parts:
 Protons (p+)– positive particle found in the
Nucleus of the atom
 Neutrons (n 0)- neutral particles also found in the
middle of the atom
 Electron (e-) – negatively charged particles found
orbiting the protons and neutrons (the Nucleus)
Electron Knowledge!
 Electrons always fill in the First electron shell first
 Stationary state – the most stable state of an atom,
electrons are “at rest” (moves in circular orbit so
electromagnetic energy remains constant.
 Valence electrons – the electrons in the Last
electron shell
Nucleus

 Protons and Neutrons

combine to form the
Nucleus.
 The electrons orbit in
circles called
ELECTRON SHELLS.
Electrons and Shells?
 Electrons are found orbiting the nucleus in a
series of electron shells (a.k.a. energy levels )
 Higher energy levels are further away from the
nucleus
 Lower energy levels are closer to the nucleus
 The pattern is : 2 e-, 8 e-, 8 e- ,16 e-, 16 e-, 32 e-
What is in an atomic number?
 The atomic number tells you the number of
Protons in an atom’s nucleus
 If you change the number of protons, you change
the ELEMENT!
For an Element,
# of protons (p+) = # of electrons (e-)
So, their charges are NEUTRAL
What about the neutrons?
 Neutrons are within the atom’s nucleus and have no electrical
charge!! (Their symbol is: no)
 Again…neutrons and protons give an atom its
mass, so to calculate number of neutrons in an
atom:

Atomic mass
# of protons in
of Subtract element (atomic #)
an atom
Prepare for a 20 item quiz next meeting.